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Chapter 18
When Mabel rode into the vale on her horse, Mac’s heart leapt to his throat. Loose strands of hair whipped around her face, her lips parting as her gaze swept over the flowers and landed on him. He had been stunned when he’d entered the vale and found the flowers in full bloom, and it lifted his heart to watch Mabel have the same reaction.
It was the very thing he needed after meeting with the solicitor at Camden Court that morning and realizing how very far away his dreams were. He didn’t know why he’d gone to the estate, to walk the empty halls and imagine a life there, when it could never be his.
And it hurt even worse that the property remained closed up and uninhabited. If the owners would drop the price, they’d likely find a family willing to obtain it. As it was, the estate needed so much work it was unlikely to sell at such an inflated value.
But Mac needed to remove the idyllic house on the northern Devon seaside from his mind. His family was more important. Once he received his prize money from the ships they’d captured during the war and freed his father from the Marshalsea prison, he would find a smaller estate they could afford, work the land and build a life for themselves. If he even had enough blunt left over for that after paying his father’s debts. He swallowed hard.
Shaking away his plans for the future, Mac fixed his gaze on the tree line and the woman paused before it. Mabel slid down from her horse and left the beast standing at the edge of the field. Crossing over the sea of flowers, she paused just a few yards from him.
“What are you doing here?” She sounded breathless, her cheeks and the tip of her nose rosy from the morning chill.
Mac clenched his hands at his sides, doing his best to appear unaffected when in actuality he’d had a trying morning and his nerves were shot. He wished to cross the distance and pull Mabel into his arms, to gain comfort from her, but he couldn’t do so. He would not use her in such a way. Last night when she’d moved closer, when she’d rested her hand on his chest, he had wished above all things to close the distance between them. But Mabel hadn’t wanted that. She’d pulled away, after all. Hadn’t that made her wishes perfectly clear?
Mabel held his gaze like the steady lighthouse on the shore, calling to him, calling him home. The startling realization washed over him like warm sunlight on a ship deck—he loved her. Mac loved this woman.
The last time they’d been together in this vale, Mabel had opened her heart and bared her soul for Mac, and he’d shot her down. Of course, he’d cared about her then, but he hadn’t loved her—not like this. With the overwhelming stress of his father’s debts just coming to light and his uncertainty in life, he had been too devastated, too caught up in his own grief, to consider her feelings. And if he was perfectly honest with himself, he’d been too full of shame to consider accepting a lock of her hair, of making a promise he didn’t know if he could keep. With the life he’d had before him, he’d never have deemed himself worthy of her. But now, could things be different? Doubt filled his chest. They couldn’t be. Not yet.
Mabel’s eyebrows arched, and Mac realized he was staring. But how could he help it? He’d just discovered the most important truth in his life. And he could do nothing about it. Prize money from ships captured during the war was not a guarantee, not until the prize courts decreed them valid and distributed the money. If his prizes were denied, Mac would be a pauper. He couldn’t just ask Mabel to give up everything here for a chance that they’d be content. He needed to know first that he could provide for her.
He cleared his throat and tried to clear his mind with it. “Your father is meeting me here. I suppose I am early.”
“Did you not say you had business to attend to this morning?” Mabel’s gaze ran the length of Mac’s shirtsleeves, pausing at his open waistcoat and bared throat.
He swallowed. He’d forgotten that he’d left his coat near Orion, but he hadn’t thought he’d see any women today. All he’d planned to do was work through the pain and frustration of a life moving the opposite direction from how he wished it would.
“I did have a meeting this morning, but I completed my business earlier than expected.”
Mabel took a step closer. The breeze lifted loose strands of her hair and they danced along behind her, the skirts of her habit swaying to the rhythm of the wind. “It is quite early to conduct a meeting. May I ask the nature of this business? Surely you are not doing anything illegal.” She paused, a playful smirk on her lips. “Are you smuggling, Mac?”
“No.” He chuckled, and her answering smile, though small, warmed him. “Though, I did travel to Camden Cove.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “So far?”
“It is only seven miles. Not even an hour’s ride.”
“Nearly an hour, though. You must have left before dawn.”
Mac nodded. An overwhelming desire to relieve his burdens filled him, to tell Mabel everything and see what she could make of it. If anyone could take his mess of a life and make something lovely from it, it was her.
“What took you to Camden Cove?”
“A house,” he said. “It will come to nothing, of course, but there is an estate there I fancy, and I considered buying it for a moment.”
“Oh?” She tilted her head to the side, a crease forming between her eyebrows. “If you think nothing will come of it, why did you go to see it?”
He kicked the dirt beneath his boot, his gaze trailing along the wild-flower strewn earth, hoping to avoid answering that question. He didn’t know why he had gone.
The flowers swayed in the soft morning breeze, their light, sweet aroma tickling his nose. The sea of larkspur spread out like a flawless violet-blue carpet, the exact color of Mabel’s striking eyes. Grief struck his heart. The vale would not remain such an untouched place after today. Mabel’s vale would be gone. Perhaps then she would understand loss, and he could tell her of his troubles. “I hoped it might be different, I suppose.”
She followed his gaze to the flower-blanketed earth, confusion clouding her brow. “Mac, why are you meeting my father here?” she asked, uncertainty lacing her tone. “I thought you were beginning the farming venture today.”
He glanced up. “They did not tell you?”
* * *
Panic gripped Mabel’s stomach. “Mac,” she repeated, noting the fear in her tone. “What did they not tell me?”
